Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to attract web traffic is add content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start to get web traffic when you begin to post web content to your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going just fine in the gizmo plant when everything ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his tool belt and made a single tap about 2 cm from the left corner of the box.
Immediately, the machinery returned to normal.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Sites
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to ping the list of update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: How To Configure WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to find and index …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site complies with all government legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories & Tags
Tags and post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide visitors with a logical map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search engine bots can understand. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to drive more traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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